Falling into Fall!

School starts in just over a week, and we're getting ready for a new school year. I really don't think I can handle more than 6 graduate hours per semester and work full-time, so I'm taking two classes: New Technologies of Instruction and Instructional Systems Design. I'm excited about taking my first ID class. I do instructional design work, of a sort, but I've never really learned much about techniques or processes. I do it all by instinct, and while that seems to work a good deal of the time, I'm sure it's not the best way. It's like a story I read about Tallulah Bankhead, who stormed the American and British stages (along with radio and a few films, including Hitchock's Lifeboat) with her vibrant personality. She was starring in a (then) brand new play written by Lillian Hellman, The Little Foxes. She had never really trained much as an actress and had gotten by mostly on instinct and personality, but her director really bore down hard on her during rehearsals and forced her to learn technique so she would be good not only on opening night, but every night. I look forward to large, steaming helpings of learning this semester. It's hard to believe that I will graduate in a year!